Phoenix Without Ashes

I had to do some background search on this one.  When I finished reading I had the distinct feeling that there was a lot more to be said, so if there was more out there, I wanted to make a note.  Well, there's more, but not in comic form.

Another of my deeply discounted sale purchases at Cards, Comics and Collectibles, the name Harlan Ellison made it an easy buy.  You'd think the full title of Harlan Ellison's Phoenix Without Ashes might mean someone else wrote it, but Ellison did pen it.  It's just that the origin of the work was in 1973.

Published by IDW in 2010, this four issue mini-series, collected in one hard cover here, has the feel of a lot of sci-fi from the '70s.  The protagonist is named Devin.  He's a young man in love with Rachel, who's supposed to marry Devin's friend Garth, though Rachel and Garth are just friends.  Rachel loves Devin, too.  It's a family thing.  See, in the society they inhabit a community leader in communication with a god/computer determines who will marry who.  The community thinks the leader is getting his orders from the god/computer, but the leader is programming the decisions himself.  Devin's a troublemaker who questions authority, so he's not going to be allowed to marry his love.  It's all very Puritan, right down to how the people dress and the agrarian economy (not resembling Amish as I read on another site).

Trying to escape the authorities, Devin stumbles on a hatch and falls in.  Turns out his community is one of many spheres attached to a large ship called The ARK.  Devin finds that crew members on this ship are dead from some accident but a helpful computer that gives him some of the ship's history.  It's enough that he realizes that there are a lots of other spheres and that each one was set up to preserve a way of human life and culture when some calamity was imminent that would destroy the Earth.  Some hundreds of years ago the accident that killed the command crew occurred, leaving the ship without pilots.  Presumably, most of the other spheres' inhabitants have lost the knowledge that they're on a ship, just like Devin's community did.

Devin returns to his community, gets caught, and is supposed to be executed but escapes with Rachel, out of the sphere and back into the corridors of the ship.  Garth sees where they go and lets them escape.

Now, in 1973 Ellison was part of a production that created a Canadian Television show called Starlost.  Ellison won awards for his script of the pilot, but the production was such a mess that he left before the first episode, which altered his script quite a bit, aired.  The show ran for 16 episodes, so there's a lot more story out there, and if you want to search it, you can find a good bit of summary in Wikipedia. 

Near as I can tell, only the part of the story represented by this collection is Ellison's work, so even though I enjoyed this book, there's nothing more out there to further the story that's the same level of quality.  Ellison has elements of The Crucible, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Lost in Space wrapped in his story, but more than enough that's new and interesting that I'd like to see a lot more.  This is a starting point to a much larger story, though I don't know if Ellison has any intention of telling anything more.

As for the art, Alan Robinson is the man behind the high quality pictures here, with coloring by Kote Carvajal.  Robinson uses a heavy line and heavy inks.  In fact, if you like Gabriel Rodriguez's art in Locke & Key, you'll like Robinson's art here.  If art could be separated at birth, these two would qualify.

IDW Previews for March

Lee: After a slow December, the previews are really picking up. As always there’s lots to like.
Thomm: And lots to be ambivalent about.

Judge Dredd: Year One #1
Matt Smith (w) • Simon Coleby (a) • Greg Staples (c)
“The Long Hard Road” begins here! In an all-new adventure from Joe Dredd’s early days as a Mega City-One Judge, writer (and Eagle-award-winning 2000 AD Editor) Matt Smith presents a tale where “all the young juves, carry the news,” only in this case, the news is delivered with a lethal blow!
Lee: And let the flooding of the stands begin. I love Dredd more than most but two books in one month is a little much, even for me. I’ll check this out because I love Coleby’s art but I don’t know how long I am going to stay.
Thomm: Have a nice visit. Not a Dredd fan so this has no appeal to me.

So Judge Dredd didn't do it for Thomm... see how well I was able to sell Thomm on more books below the break.

The Week of January 2 in Review – Part 4 of 4 - An Opinion - Gail Simone Comic Book Geekdom’s Goddess

I often think my last name should be Jim Contrarian as opposed to Jim Martin. The reason is that once I see everyone lining up on one side of an issue I’m inherently suspicious and prefer to look at the other side. 

Now in the main comic websites I visit it appears that Gail Simone is a heroine in her own right and a living and breathing comic book goddess whose writing stands up there with Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Gardner Fox, Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder. This has been proven by DC’s great reversal of rehiring her after kicking her off Batgirl, because that book has been universally praised as the best thing ever written, oh wait it hasn’t.

As with my diatribe on Hawkeye, let me make it clear that I like Gail Simone’s work on many books and I’m a supporter of her and Jim Califore’s Kickstarter project. It is just that I do not think Batgirl has been a very good book and I thought her run on Wonder Woman was very, very mixed and ultimately unreadable.

Gail first impressed me with her work on Birds of Prey. She took over a concept that Chuck Dixon had started and done a great job with it. She had such a great handle on Oracle, Black Canary and the rest that the series become her signature book and most readers forgot that someone else even started the concept.

Next I loved her Secret Six work, one of the best books of its ilk. Her and Jim Califore (mainly) absolutely rocked this book. The interplay between the bad guys was so well done that you started to love Catman, Deadshot and all the rest. In fact the arc with Catman having his son kidnapped was one of the best stories done that year.

The Week of January 2 in Review Part 3 of 4 – 4 Books That Rocked

This is the end of the comic review segment as Part 4 is my opinion piece. Still comic book related, but not related to a specific book. These four books were all impressive and very enjoyable. We have one major league book, one book going on hiatus, one ending and one smaller book that is just an excellent read.

The book going on hiatus is American Vampire; issue #34 is the last issue for awhile as Scott Snyder (writer) and Rafael Albuquerque take a breather, get caught up and prepare for what Scott says is the final half of American Vampire. I’m guessing the break will be about six months or so. I wish more stories had the ability to take a hiatus. The monthly grind can be just that and I think the hiatus is a positive. I was surprised to read that the next half of the book is the final part of the series. Still that is around three more years of American Vampire and I believe most stories are stronger by having a beginning, middle and an end. Of course there is no reason why there can’t be some follow up series down the road unless Scott ends it with blowing up the world. I liked how we had this chapter that served almost as a teaser for what is to come. American Vampire has been everything you could ask for out of a great story, compelling characters, action, adventure, romance, horror and moments of hope. Rafael has grown as an artist and the marriage of words and pictures has been absolutely seamless. Scott knows when to let the art carry the story and when to add in script to move the plot forward. I care about Pearl and loath Skinner Sweet as though they were people who I know personally. This is a great series, a seminal series that will define both Scott and Rafael and mark them as top notch creators. If you are not reading this series you are missing out and should buy the trades or hard cover collections and catch up and be ready when it comes back.

The Week of January 2 in Review Part 2 of 4 Six Books That I Read

Each week breaks itself into parts and in order to get the write ups done I decided to give some review/impressions on whatever I read first. Often the order I read is almost random and I also use the Best Books ofthe Week post from Cosmic Comix as a guide since that post is up before I get my books. I have broken up everything else I got around to into two groups, the best of the books and the rest. These six are the rest of the group and Part 3 will be the best that I read.

Splash Page

Teen Titans #15 by Scott Lobdell plot, Fabian Nicieza script, Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund art was total trash. From the first page we the stereotypical impossible pose of a female super hero. This stuff is now routinely mocked and as an industry we should be a little more grown up about our portrayal of this stuff or at least have some anatomical idea of what can or cannot be done. Next is the over laying dialogue that took me a few pages to realize it was Red Robin as narrator. I know they are trying to make Tim Drake this uber-smart tactician who can predict all the actions but I find it a drain on the flow of the book as I had to read captains and then look at the panels. It does not make for an easy read. Next is the portrayal of Bunker, who I believe is a gay character. If I was gay I would be insulted by how he comes off as a stereotype in this comic. I dropped this book a few issues in and only got it again since it was “Death of the Family” book. Bunker comes off as flamboyantly gay and not as just a good strong character. Hell all the Titans are portrayed as caricatures and not characters. The confrontation with the Joker and Red Robin was also boring and not frightening. Yes, Red Robin is being outguessed by the Joker and the Titans are racing to find him. The Joker outsmarts them at every turn and has the Titans as his unwitting accomplices in his plan to turn the populace into people like him. Sadly Titans #16 is another part of the DOTF story line and I have decided to read all the chapters. The plus was Lobdell is only the plotter and maybe he is coming off this book. Nah, it doesn’t matter this book is trash, except for Tim Drake, who has been ruined by his new origin in the new DCU.

The Week of January 2 in Review Part 1 of 4 Spider-Man, Spider-Man The Not So Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

As always we have a few notes about how this is going to work and why. Not that anyone cares, but I have a desire to explain my rationale as some sort of form of self therapy. I just received the last two weeks of books on Friday as paying for postage on what was essentially a skip week made no sense. So the week in review is including books from the last week of the year and the first week of the year. Next my time is limited as I have a lot of football to watch. I love these two weekends as we get four NFL games all with their own time slots and theoretically get the best teams playing each other. Often these can be the most competitive games, plus I have skin in one game as the Ravens are playing. By the time this is posted we will know if next weekend also has the Ravens or not. What that all means that I’m writing up all the books that I have managed to read. Also I have added an opinion piece to end this week in review cycle and hope to do that more often in the future.  Finally we have the de rigueur links for next week’s books with the clean and concise list here and the detailed listing here. The books I’m looking forward to the most are Detective Comics, Sweet Tooth, Superior Spider-Man, Star Wars (By Brian Wood) and The Legend of Luther Strode.

This part is devoted to the two Spider-Man books and we will go in reverse order. Avenging Spider-Man 15.1 by Chris Yost, Paco Medina and Juan Vlasco was a nice bridge from Amazing to Superior. We get our first glimpse of the new Peter Otto Parker. It is a clever examination as the character relives both who he is and who he was. It is also a good sales gimmick to try and drive some sales into Avenging Spider-Man, but I’m long done with team up books so this was a one and done for me. Still Chris Yost does a nice job with Potto Parker realizing that Peter Parker always won the day. Add into that a few costume changes and we get the new iteration of Spider-Man. A very nice companion piece but I still feel this book has no impact on the regular title and therefore will not get added to my list.

The Week of January 2 in Review - Preview - 4 Parts coming Monday and Tuesday